Chinese tigers to attend hunting school in Africa

By Hamish McDonald, in BeijingDecember 9 2002

China is to send to South Africa tiger cubs born in captivity to learn hunting skills so they can be released into the wild.

With the number of tigers in the wild thought to be as low as 30, Chinese conservationists are ready to try desperate measures to avoid the endangered sub-species of Chinese tiger, or Panthera tigris amoyensis, becoming only a zoo animal.

About 60 of the species survive and breed in zoos and game parks, but they are thought to have lost the ability to fend for themselves in the natural environment.

The State Forestry Administration's Wildlife Research Centre has just signed an agreement for the new foreign education program with two non-government organisations, London-based Save China's Tigers, and Chinese Tigers South Africa.

"China currently is not able to help the cubs regain hunting skills," a scientist in the Chinese research centre, Lu Jun, told the official Xinhua news agency.");document.write("

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Selected tiger cubs from Chinese zoos will be sent to South Africa, where they will be trained to hunt in a 300-square-kilometre area secured by the two organisations. Once able to hunt their own food, they will be returned to a pilot reserve in China where the habitat and prey animals have been restored.

The first "rehabilitated" tigers are expected to be released into the wild in 2008, coinciding with the Beijing Olympics, and thereafter will become the focus of eco-tourism ventures.

The Chinese tiger is thought to be the species from which all other tigers evolved, but like tigers everywhere in Asia it has been threatened with extinction by human encroachment and deforestation, and by hunters seeking to sell its skins.

The founder of Save China's Tigers, Li Quan, hopes more than a dozen endangered species can be preserved along with the tiger, which operates at the apex of a widespread food chain.